


the horizon is all we have

by alyciaclebnam



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, except more like acquaintances with benefits bc aubrey is stubborn, follows the movie plot but with mitchsen fwb, pp1 au, this is just 5000+ words of beca pining after aubrey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 15:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17748908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyciaclebnam/pseuds/alyciaclebnam
Summary: Beca starts looking forward to each tomorrow because of Aubrey, but she's too scared to admit her feelings.





	the horizon is all we have

“The girls will be back any minute,” Aubrey murmurs.

Her argument is belied by the lack of conviction in her tone and the way she leans into Beca’s touch. There’s also the fact that _she’s_ the one who pulled Beca aside by the collar of her flannel and started kissing her like she held the key to winning the ICCAs halfway down her throat.

Beca smirks at Aubrey’s palpable desperation. “Challenge accepted.”

She doesn’t know whether it’s her words or her hands that make Aubrey groan and almost slam her head against the wall.

They’re tucked in an emergency exit alley, away from the main entrance of the auditorium, just in case the Bellas come back early from their Aubrey-sanctioned mid-rehearsal break. Beca thinks the chances of that happening are slim to none, but she would rather take on the cafeteria mystery meat than try to dissuade Aubrey from her neuroticism.

There would probably be less puke involved that way.

“You know,” Beca says, curling her fingers and grinning when Aubrey inhales sharply. “This is your fault. I’m not the one who scheduled a Pilates class straight after practice.”

After practice is _their_ time, but that detail goes unsaid. Beca is pretty sure they both know it by now.

Aubrey doesn’t even acknowledge the accusation, just continues to ride Beca’s hand. Beca doesn’t mind when Aubrey acts selfishly during moments like this; she’ll return the favour eventually, like she always does.

Honestly, Beca didn’t think Aubrey would even _consider_ hooking up mid-rehearsal, let alone initiate anything, but maybe Beca wasn’t the only one disappointed at the thought of missing out on their alone time.

That’s what she hopes, at least. Aubrey insists that their arrangement is purely physical, that she still hates everything Beca represents, but the regular release of endorphins is worth compromising her morals.

Beca believes otherwise, of course.

Her cattiness aside – which Beca admits that she deserves, more often than not – Aubrey is ridiculously intelligent and almost intimidatingly attractive. She could have anyone she wanted, but she keeps coming back to _Beca_.

Beca thinks that that must mean something.

It’s only another minute or so before Aubrey is arching her back and clenching her eyes shut. Despite the earlier bravado, Beca doesn’t dwell on her victory. Instead, she sinks into the rush of warmth that comes with the way Aubrey slackens and falls readily into her arms.

Aubrey trusts Beca to catch her, to hold her until her legs can support her own weight again. It’s another tally on Beca’s mental list, the one cataloguing all the little actions that go against Aubrey’s claims that they’re just satisfying their basic biological needs.

When Aubrey starts coming to, Beca rearranges her face into a neutral mask. She can’t tip her hand; not yet, not this soon in the game.

“Tomorrow?” Beca asks.

“Tomorrow,” Aubrey confirms.

Beca seals the deal with a chaste kiss and another little piece of her heart.

***

She doesn’t remember when it started. Somewhere between fighting passive-aggressively over the setlist and vying for one another’s attention by being deliberately obtuse, Beca starts daydreaming about shutting Aubrey up with her mouth, until one day she does it for real.

***

“Beca,” Aubrey laughs breathily. “You know I’m sensitive there.”

Beca hums against her skin like she can’t hear her, which makes Aubrey huff.

“Despite the obnoxious volume at which you listen to your music, I know you’re not deaf.”

Beca can hear the smile in her voice through her half-hearted protests, and the way Aubrey’s hands remain fisted in Beca’s shirt is also pretty telling. Her ego takes a slight hit at Aubrey’s continued verbosity, but she simply begins teasing her with renewed determination.

She resists the urge to gloat when she draws out another giggle. Aubrey has a light, tinkling laugh that Beca may or may not have once described as WASP-y. She kind of likes it now though.

“Beca…”

Aubrey would probably describe her tone as ‘gently demanding’. Beca would call it a straight up whine.

When Beca refuses to relent, Aubrey grumbles, “I could just go back to my room and get myself off, you know.”

Beca lifts her head up at that, unsure whether she’s bluffing. She purses her lips at Aubrey’s slight pout, and then finally acquiesces.

“Sorry,” Beca says, except she’s not really sorry at all. From her pointed expression, Beca figures Aubrey is aware of this. “I can make it up to you?” she offers.

She starts with a light kiss to the edge of Aubrey’s jaw, follows with a line of soft kisses across the swell of her cheek, and ends with a lingering kiss at the corner of her mouth. She worries for a second that she’s being too gentle, that Aubrey will call her out for being overly affectionate, but Aubrey doesn’t complain or push her away, just tilts her head the slightest bit towards Beca’s wandering lips.

Beca won’t lie – she gets pretty hot and bothered when Aubrey is in aca-authoritarian mode, but this side of Aubrey warms her up in an entirely different way.

She drags the tension out for as long as she can, until Aubrey is so worked up that she guides Beca’s hands purposefully low and the atmosphere shifts beyond recall.

When Aubrey moans and slumps against the closed lid of the grand piano, Beca is ready to break her fall. She cradles the back of Aubrey’s head in her hand and waits patiently for her to recover, knowing how sleepy she gets after sex.

Beca thinks this might be her favourite part of their whole arrangement. Post-orgasm Aubrey has loose limbs and a tender-eyed smile – one that Beca hopes no one else is privy to – and she doesn’t shy away from affection.

For the first time ever, Beca finds herself wanting to _give_ affection.

She doesn’t indulge though, doesn’t try to push past the staunch walls that Aubrey constructed, for fear of driving her away. She would rather have this small part of Aubrey than nothing at all.

Moments like this remind her that she’s not as heartless as she lets people believe.

Beca makes herself content with watching Aubrey’s blinking become more and more drawn out, until she finally succumbs and closes her eyes. Her arm starts cramping because of the way she’s half-hovering over Aubrey and leaning heavily on it, but she doesn’t want to jostle Aubrey’s head and disturb the rare calm between them.

The second Aubrey’s eyelids start fluttering open, Beca kisses her to hide what’s probably a gross saccharine smile on her face.

Aubrey kisses her back lazily, but when she eventually pulls away, Beca can tell from her blank expression that their time is up. She tries not to be hurt by the way Aubrey mechanically separates from her and starts straightening herself up.

“Same time tomorrow?” Aubrey asks, when they’re both dressed and the evidence of their rendezvous has been wiped from the piano lid.

Beca wants to tell Aubrey to stop asking, because she can’t see herself ever saying anything but yes.

***

Acapella rehearsals turn into sidelong glances, hurried kisses in the bathroom during breaks, and Beca pretending to be bad at choreography so that Aubrey has no choice but to help her personally.

Aubrey always rolls her eyes, but she can’t ignore her duty as captain in front of the Bellas, and Beca knows it.

Being “terrible” at drawing a rectangle in the air with her fingers is a bit of a stretch, but Beca manages it. The others don’t question her incompetence for a second, and she might be offended if they didn’t all collectively suck at this dated routine. Aubrey just stares at her for a while and Beca thinks she’s won again, until Aubrey says something to Chloe and _Chloe_ bounds over to offer her incredibly handsy assistance.

Even so, Beca doesn’t give up.

Truthfully, she thought she’d get sick of the veritable obstacle course of rules that Aubrey forces her to obey in public. But the effort required to follow along with Aubrey’s micromanaging is counterbalanced by her desire for their clandestine moments, for the intimacy that Aubrey grants her in the sanctuary of the empty practice room.

She thought she was safe behind her formative years’ worth of emotional detachment, but Aubrey continues to take tiny bits of her heart with every touch, and Beca finds that she doesn’t really mind.

Aubrey is the only one that makes the dysfunctional thing work anyway, so why not just give the pieces away?

***

“We can’t,” Aubrey says between heated kisses.

“We shouldn’t,” Beca corrects, tugging at the hem of Aubrey’s athletic shirt.

She’s forgotten _why_ they shouldn’t, but the back and forth has become somewhat routine. Aubrey generally protests a little, and then Beca reminds her that there’s nothing stopping them since practice is over for the day.

On more than one occasion, she’s humoured Aubrey by checking behind the bleachers and in the bathroom for any stray Bellas. But today, she seems even more hesitant than usual.

Aubrey holds the bottom of her shirt down with one hand and asks, “What about Jesse?”

Beca stops trying to undress her. “What about him?”

Aubrey doesn’t explain further, but Beca gets the message. She grits her teeth, because the last thing she wants to do is fight over a stupid _boy_. When one of them raises their voice, the other will raise theirs, and then they inevitably escalate into an unintelligible screaming match.

Beca doubts that this argument will lead to angry makeup sex though.

No matter how many times she shoots down the allegations, Aubrey refuses to believe her. This time stings even more than usual, too – Aubrey isn’t trying to save face or maintain their cover in front of the Bellas by accusing Beca of being treble-boned.

That leaves one laughable conclusion: Aubrey must genuinely believe that there’s something going on between her and Jesse.

“I don’t want Jesse,” Beca says with a scoff.

 _I want you_ , is what she should probably say, but in all their time together, Aubrey hasn’t said it, and Beca can’t bring herself to say it first. Their steadfastness has been keeping them safe from whatever this could be.

Beca might not be ready to voice her feelings, but she _is_ growing tired of pretending that she doesn’t want more. More than secret glances and stolen moments; more than this nameless thing that neither she nor Aubrey has been able to walk away from.

She’s been waiting for the right moment, for Aubrey to come around on her own, but she realises that there was never going to be a perfect time.

At the end of the year, Aubrey is going to graduate and Beca will be on her way to Los Angeles. Beca doesn’t know what Aubrey’s plans are until then – probably something elaborate, scheduled down to the second – but as it stands, her only plan for tomorrow and every day after is _Aubrey_ , and it’s been that way for a while now.

Beca sighs, because this is it. Whether she confesses now or never, she’s going to lose Aubrey in a few months anyway.

She wants to at least _try_ and see where this goes.

“Aubrey, I want-” Beca begins, but Aubrey cuts her off, nudging her backwards slightly and putting some distance between them.

 _And we’re off to a great start_ , Beca thinks wryly.

“Don’t make this something that it isn’t,” Aubrey warns. Her expression is hard, but it softens slightly when she takes in Beca’s earnest gaze. “We have a good thing going, Beca. Please don’t do this.”

Beca tries to smile, but it probably comes out more like a grimace. “Would it be so bad if we just-”

“We can’t,” Aubrey reminds her.

“We _can_ ,” Beca counters. She steps forward but Aubrey crosses her arms, closing herself off from Beca’s touch.

That’s when Beca starts to doubt herself, starts thinking that maybe she’s just been an infatuated idiot this whole time. Because maybe Aubrey wasn’t _hiding_ her feelings, like Beca thought.

Maybe she didn’t _have_ them in the first place.

Beca wanted any piece of Aubrey that she could get, has been trading her heart away little by little, in the hopes that Aubrey was getting ready to give hers away too.

But apparently Beca has read too much into their casual arrangement.

“We can,” she repeats dumbly. “But you don’t want to.”

 _You don’t want me_ , is what she means to say, but she doesn’t want to sound as pathetic as she feels.

When Aubrey looks down and doesn’t respond, Beca makes a choice.

She preceded every kiss with a split second of hesitation, wondered if every touch was going to be the last. She accepted what little she was given and didn’t think about how she was self-sabotaging, tearing her own heart apart and trying to fill the holes with hollow hopes.

Beca isn’t the poster child for emotional intelligence, but even _she_ knows that this will fuck her up if she lets it keep going.

So she does what she should have done a long time ago.

She gets halfway to the exit before Aubrey says anything.

“Beca-”

Beca hates the way she stops and turns around hopefully. Aubrey falters. Beca doesn’t mean to latch onto it, but Aubrey has had a way of getting under her skin since day one.

“Bellas rehearsal is at 8am tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

Aubrey doesn’t spare her another glance before walking away. Whatever was left of Beca’s heart falls and shatters on the practice room floor, scattering like broken glass.

She leaves the pieces behind; they were already Aubrey’s for the taking.

***

Surprisingly, rehearsals aren’t that awkward. Beca and Aubrey have maintained a perfunctory relationship in front of the Bellas ever since they started sleeping together, with their occasional pedantic arguments and deliberate antagonism – which was on par with their relationship after hours, anyway.

But Beca is no longer privy to secret glances when the girls are otherwise occupied, or frenzied kisses in the bathroom during mid-rehearsal breaks. Whenever she struggles with the choreography, Aubrey makes herself conveniently unavailable and she has to accept Chloe’s help instead.

It’s ironic, Beca muses. When she first joined the Bellas, she wanted Aubrey to stop ragging on her for not being the perfect acapella lackey, but now that it’s finally happening, she wishes the opposite.

Because she can’t _un-_ discover how Aubrey sounds like a cute little chipmunk when she laughs, or how her accent gets decidedly more southern when she starts monologuing, or how a kiss just below the ear is the fastest way to relieve the tension in her shoulders.

She has all this knowledge about Aubrey, all these details and idiosyncrasies, taking up precious real estate in her brain. She’s reminded of them every time she looks at Aubrey, but Aubrey doesn’t look like she’s hurting at all.

She just goes about her business like nothing ever happened. Beca has enough of an ego to be hurt by the nonchalance.

And because she has the emotional self-control of a child, she acts out.

She just wants Aubrey to notice her again, to look at her the way she used to. She wants confirmation that it wasn’t all one-sided, that their relationship wasn’t just a matter of convenience – that she actually _meant_ something to Aubrey.

So Beca does what she does best in times of crisis: she pours her feelings into her music and makes a mashup.

In fairness, live on stage at the ICCA semi-finals is probably not the _best_ time to create said mashup.

(Beca’s learning that she doesn’t do things by halves, not when it comes to acting on her feelings and potentially fucking her life up.)

The impromptu adjustment to the set goes pretty well, she thinks. The judges seem impressed, the audience looks mildly interested in them for once, and Aubrey is practically vibrating with anger.

Beca’s not exactly _enthused_ by the latter, but it’s the first time Aubrey has met her gaze in days, so she feels somewhat vindicated as Chloe takes her solo and the Bellas settle back into the normal routine.

As expected, Aubrey starts ripping into her as soon as they’re clear of the stage. Beca doesn’t hesitate to defend herself – she’d fight a brick wall if it insulted her first – and she stresses the fact that people were _literally_ falling asleep during their set.

The argument escalates, like things always do between them, but then something in Aubrey’s voice changes and Beca realises she’s not just talking about the setlist anymore.

“It’s not your job to decide what we do and when we do it.”

The words crawl uncomfortably under Beca’s skin and she starts losing whatever fight she had left. Aubrey then pointedly asks the girls how they felt about her improvisation, and she deflates when no one comes to her defence, not even Amy.

“I told you she wasn’t a Bella,” Aubrey says to Chloe, though her gaze stays trained on Beca.

She’s trying to sound derisive, but Beca knows her well enough to detect the shaky undertone in her voice. She hates that she recognises it, because that means she can read between the lines.

 _I was never yours_ , is what Aubrey is really saying.

And then Aubrey accuses her of hooking up with Jesse _again_ , falling back under their usual guise in front of the Bellas, and Beca accepts defeat. Her throat is tight, but everything has already gone up in flames and her pride is begging her to have the last word.

“If this is what I get for trying,” she says with a thin smile, before finally walking away.

***

Beca spends most of spring break working at the radio station, and it gives her a lot of time to think.

In retrospect, she can see why her last-minute mashup blew up in her face – she self-sabotaged and brought down everyone that she cared about in one fell swoop. She was angry at _herself_ for becoming so attached to Aubrey, and she took that out on not only Aubrey but the rest of the Bellas, and ultimately jeopardised their chance at the ICCAs.

It takes her an embarrassingly long time to realise that she made a mistake that day. She just had so much to prove – she wanted to prove to Aubrey that their relationship was worth something, to prove to the crowd and that cocky Footnotes tween that the Bellas were actually _good_ – and she ended up letting her emotions cloud her judgement.

She almost throws her phone away after it happens, because she can’t bring herself to answer Chloe’s texts or Amy’s calls, too busy drowning in bitterness and nursing her bruised ego. She settles for deleting herself from the group chat and muting all her social media notifications.

Only then does she realise how much space the Bellas took up in her life, and how much she genuinely _misses_ them.

Her dad doesn’t look surprised to see her at his doorstep. Beca wonders if he was expecting her to monumentally fuck up and come to him as a last resort.

He doesn’t gloat, thankfully, just leads her to the kitchen and starts making a pot of coffee. He doesn’t ask what happened, leaving Beca to work up the courage to tell him about what went down at the semi-finals.

“No one was more surprised than me, but I _really_ liked-” Beca cuts herself short when she almost says Aubrey’s name. “-those girls,” she finishes lamely.

He starts pouring their coffee and asks, “And you thought quitting was the answer?”

Beca can’t believe he has the gall to say that, considering _he_ left her and her mom, but he parries her indignant squawking with ease.

“Look, your mom and I… we didn’t work,” he says simply. “And I tried so hard to make things right between us, but you just shut me out.”

“Yeah, well…” Beca begins wearily, because that’s a truth she already knows. “I shut everybody out. Don’t take it personally; it’s just easier.”

“It’s also really lonely,” her dad points out.

Beca knows that too. She accepted that her attitude towards life would be isolating, but she figured that occasional loneliness would be better than inevitable heartbreak.

Except now she understands that some people are worth the risk.

Aubrey has proven that to her time and time again. Beca never once thought to stop their clandestine meetings, not even when she realised she was falling for her.

Hell, the rest of the Bellas wormed their way into her heart too, and she didn’t stop them. Sure, she complained about the constant invasion of privacy and the absurd lack of boundaries (granted, those were mostly on Chloe and Amy), but she never really tried to stop them from getting close.

Beca _wants_ to be their friend. She wants to _be_ wanted.

She laughs breathily and asks her dad what to do, though she feels like she already knows the answer.

***

Beca gets a message from Chloe about the Footnotes being disqualified, and so the Bellas have made it to the finals by default. Relieved that her stupid outburst didn’t cost them their shot, she decides to drop by the rehearsal space to give them a proper apology.

If she didn’t know better, she’d think that she walked into a rioting asylum.

“Guys,” she tries, picking up the pace and raising her voice when nobody so much as acknowledges her. “Guys, stop! _What_ is going on?”

Everybody has inexplicably gone insane – Amy has Aubrey and Chloe pinned to the floor in a dual chokehold, Lilly is making snow angels in a puddle of vomit beside them, and Stacie is blowing her rape whistle more fervently than Kate Winslet in _Titanic_ – but her presence seems to snap them out of their communal madness.

As soon as Aubrey picks herself up off the floor, she shoots Beca down. “This is a Bellas rehearsal.”

“I know,” Beca says gently, approaching them like she would an abandoned crying baby – that is to say, she’s mostly opposed to the idea, but she has a decent enough moral compass to know that she can’t walk away. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

Aubrey seems surprised by the honesty, and the way she starts toying with the pitch pipe in her hands instead of immediately shutting her down encourages Beca to continue.

“What I did was a really dick move, and I shouldn’t have changed the set without asking you guys,” she admits, her gaze flickering between the girls and the floor. “And I definitely shouldn’t have left. I let you guys down, and I’m really sorry.”

“And,” she adds, trying to maintain eye contact with Aubrey, but the intensity in those blue eyes sends her gaze swivelling back down. “Aubrey, if you would have me, I want back in.”

Aubrey stares at her calculatingly, like she’s challenging the apology. Beca is familiar with the expression; she used to push Aubrey to this point almost every day. She’s wholly unsurprised that Aubrey is holding her ground.

She _is_ surprised, however, when Aubrey breaks eye contact and starts fiddling with the pitch pipe. When Aubrey meets Beca’s gaze again, her expression is coloured with sadness. Beca notes the quiver in her chin and realises just how much she disappointed her with the semi-finals stunt.

The ICCA finals was going to be Aubrey’s swan song, her chance to redeem herself and the Barden Bellas in the eyes of the acapella community, but Beca put all of her hard work at risk.

Maybe she deserves this.

Beca gives Aubrey a tight-lipped smile and grabs the nearest fold-up chair, dragging it towards the exit. She can’t help glancing back a few times as she does; even if she _deserves_ to be kicked off the Bellas, she doesn’t _want_ to leave.

Just as she starts giving up hope and stops turning around, Aubrey calls out.

“Wait.”

***

Aubrey doesn’t end up booting her from the Bellas, thank god. The girls take a moment to put themselves back together – Ashley takes one for the team and helps Lilly wipe vomit from her clothes – and as she watches a handful of apologies get passed around, Beca points out that they don’t know much about each other.

There are some, like Chloe and Amy and Stacie, that everyone knows far too intimately, but as for the rest of them? Beca can’t say that she even knows Jessica’s last name, and the others could probably say the same about her.

It’s a startling realisation, that she knows so little about the people that she spends so much time with.

In an uncharacteristic display of sentiment, Beca actually encourages the idea of getting to know one another, and they end up in a weird AA sharing circle that she doesn’t _love_ but knows is probably necessary.

When the spotlight turns to her, Beca hesitates. She could share pretty much anything, since everyone knows jack about her, but she thinks this calls for something meaningful; something real.

“I’ve never been one of those girls who had a lot of friends who were girls,” she admits eventually, looking around at the Bellas. “And I do now.”

It’s short and sweet, and about as much as Beca can handle on the feelings front right now.

She rolls her eyes at the sappiness of it all, at the warm smiles on many of the Bellas’ faces – and the one she can feel tugging at the corners of her own mouth. Beca catches even Aubrey trying to hide a small smile, and oh god, she can feel herself involuntarily starting to smile _with teeth_.

She hurriedly begs for anyone else to take the metaphorical conch.

Chloe takes the cue, thankfully, but subsequently dissolves into tears when she admits that she went ahead with the surgery for her nodes. Her distress seems to push Aubrey into standing with a renewed determination.

“Beca,” Aubrey begins, and Beca quickly decides to stand too; it feels like they’re about to have A Moment and she wants to be on equal footing for that. “What do we do?”

The question throws her for a loop – nobody has ever asked her for advice before. Shit, she’s not even used to hearing her name without it being followed by an insult or a reprimand.

Rationally, Beca knows that Aubrey is responsible for the nearby puddle of puke, but for a split second, she has the strong urge to kiss her.

(She can’t help the way she continues to look at Aubrey, even after that impulse passes. It’s been days since they last touched, and this is the closest they’ve been since semi-finals and Aubrey is staring at her so _earnestly_.)

“I have an idea,” Beca declares. Then she catches sight of the dry vomit on Aubrey’s chin and the still-wet vomit in Lilly’s hair and decides that those two definitely need a time out first, possibly a hospital-grade disinfectant shower. “Meet me at the pool later tonight?”

***

Beca adores the acoustics in the abandoned pool. Ever since the riff-off, she’d been dying to get her equipment down here to record some vocals, but between classes and the Bellas and the radio station, she just never found the time.

Once the girls have gathered, she marches them further down into the pool. She may have wanted to steer the Bellas in a different direction since the beginning, but now that it’s finally happening, she’s nervous as fuck and she hopes they can’t tell.

This is her one chance to show Aubrey what they could be.

By _they_ , she means the Bellas, obviously.

(Not really. But she tries to mean it.)

“Um, Aubrey?” Beca begins hesitantly, because she doesn’t yet know how to address her within their newfound dynamic. “Would you pick a song for us please?”

An answer comes sooner than she expects, like Aubrey already had a song in mind.

“Bruno Mars. _Just the Way You Are_.”

Aubrey nods like she’s trying to convince herself that it’s the right choice, and Beca tries not to read into it. She’s sure her expression looks manic right now though, striking a discordant balance between elated and flustered.

Worried about her recent surgery, Beca confirms that Chloe is okay to take the lead. She then locks eyes with Aubrey, letting her know to follow on as she begins the arrangement.

Beca means to stop looking at Aubrey once she gets everyone else started on the background vocals, but her intentions wither away when she weaves Nelly’s _Just a Dream_ into the mix and Aubrey starts harmonising with her.

She honestly didn’t think that Aubrey’s pleasant, bell-like tone would work so well with her own voice, but she’s been wrong before.

Based on their expressions, the other girls are just as surprised.

The silence rings loudly at the end of the arrangement, though no one tries to break it. Everyone is presumably in awe of how good they sound when they’re working with decent material, but Beca is stuck on the fact that Aubrey is smiling openly at her.

Beca knows _her_ song choice was personal, but the way Aubrey is gazing at her makes her wonder if her song choice was personal too.

Thankfully Aubrey has the sense to look away first, because Beca has forgotten how to function.

“Hands in,” Aubrey announces, her voice coloured with a cheerfulness that the Bellas have never heard before.

Beca, unable to rein in her enthusiasm, races towards the centre of the cheesy hand stack. She mentally fist-pumps when she lands on Aubrey’s outstretched hand half a second before Cynthia Rose.

She figures she’s been caught out, judging from Aubrey’s knowing look. But Aubrey doesn’t comment, and Beca is left to wonder if she actually means anything by it.

She tries not to let hope begin to bubble in her chest, but even the unexpected discovery of Chloe’s bass notes (and the fact that Lilly can not only speak at an appreciable volume, but actually _beatbox_ ) can’t dissuade the feeling from growing.

“Rehearsal at 8am tomorrow,” Aubrey reminds the Bellas as they disperse. “We have a new setlist to come up with.”

She watches their retreating backs until they’re halfway across the pool, then her gaze turns to Beca. Beca waits, unsure what she will do.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Aubrey asks softly.

Beca doesn’t think she can respond to that without breaking into a violent grin. She nods instead, and then starts hustling after the Bellas before her dopamine-drunk brain makes her do something stupid.

***

Weeks pass, and Beca settles into her unofficial role as third co-captain of the Bellas. She can’t command the room as well as Aubrey or Chloe, but for someone who was once a screaming order away from becoming a self-proclaimed anarchist, she thinks she does a pretty decent job.

She doesn’t want to say that things are changing between her and Aubrey, doesn’t want to jinx it, but she can feel the weight of change deep in her chest, heavy and warm and inviting.

***

“Beca, I need to speak with you.”

Aubrey and Beca both wave off Chloe’s concerned glances between them. Chloe shoots Aubrey a questioning look, but Aubrey shakes her head and tells her not to wait up.

Beca stands awkwardly by the piano as the others start packing away their water bottles and sheet music. The new setlist is coming together well; she doesn’t think this is about that. Aubrey seems to be waiting for the Bellas to filter out, so Beca thinks she knows where this is going.

Chloe is the last to leave, but only after triple-checking that they don’t need her to stay. When the door closes behind her with a resounding clang, Aubrey turns to Beca.

“I was scared of the way you make me feel,” Aubrey admits without preamble, ducking her head. When she meets Beca’s eyes again, Beca can see the remorse in the set of her jaw. “My father always said that Posens aren’t supposed to feel frivolous emotions like happiness, o-or… _love_ ,” she says, her eyes flickering away for a half-second at the last word.

Beca hopes her breathing doesn’t sound as ragged as it does to her own ears. Aubrey takes the smallest of steps towards her, like Beca might smite her where she stands, as she continues.

“I’m sorry that I pushed you away,” she says quietly, ashamedly. Beca’s instinct is to reach out for her, but she balls her fists into the material of her shirt instead. “Can we start over?”

Beca considers her. Aubrey’s gaze doesn’t waver from her own.

“No,” is what she ultimately says.

Aubrey doesn’t speak, but Beca has long since learned to read her silence. She’s crestfallen.

“I think we’ve wasted enough time pretending to be something that we’re not,” Beca continues, a wry smile quirking her lips when Aubrey fails to hide the glow that washes across her face. “So, no, we can’t start over. But we _can_ start with a date.”

Beca commits it to memory, Aubrey’s tender-eyed smile, the one that nobody really sees.

“Tomorrow night, 7 o’clock?” Aubrey asks hopefully.

“Tomorrow,” Beca confirms with an unbidden smile.

Aubrey steps forward, and every muscle in Beca’s body tenses.

The kiss is chaste, on the highest part of her cheek, but she doesn’t push for more. She’s no stranger to waiting for Aubrey; she’d stare down the apocalypse with her feet planted in one spot, fighting the elements for the chance to have a future with Aubrey, she knows that now.

Beca reaches for Aubrey’s hand, and this time, Aubrey meets her halfway.

She feels Aubrey slip her heart back into her chest, holding the pieces together with careful fingers, ready for them to heal. Their happiness is on the horizon, she’s sure of it.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr @ alyciaclebnam


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